


Sacrament

by presage_bloom



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, F/F, Highly Niche Content, Memnoch the Devil, More theology than I thought I would ever write as a weird agnostic occultist, Stigmata, The Tale of the Body Thief, somehow edgier than Anne Rice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/presage_bloom/pseuds/presage_bloom
Summary: Vampires Dora and Gretchen discuss The Realms of Atlantis, and talk turns to blood.Dora x Gretchen
Relationships: Dora/Gretchen
Kudos: 2





	Sacrament

**Author's Note:**

> I am re-reading Memnoch the Devil, and I thought Dora deserved better, even if she did get one of the most memorable feeding scenes of all of the Vampire Chronicles.

Dora closed her copy of Prince Lestat and The Realms of Atlantis and sighed.

It had been twenty one years since she'd met the vampire Lestat, and her knowledge of theology had been struck at its foundations. She'd only been human for a few of those years. To be twenty five seemed so hopelessly young, hopelessly idealistic in her dreams of Evangelical leadership. After the incident with Memnoch, she'd gone to seminary school, dabbled in Kabbalah, and ultimately had opened a quiet retreat for women of all faiths. She danced for no one. Dora was no longer a temple virgin ecstatic in her movements for the divine. 

The veil, and Memnoch, and her father's death had hardened something in her, that perhaps needed to be hardened. She'd gone on a pilgrimage, to see the vampiric spirits, to see the places where Lestat and Armand had met… someone. Something. 

She'd met Gretchen, bleeding in the deepest part of the forest, wide eyed, a shocking mirror of Dora, who she might have been in a different life. Something deep stirred within her. Some memory of the adulterous saints of Wyken, dancing in their walled garden. Dora had asked the modern saint to return with her, to come to her covenant. To her surprise, Gretchen agreed. She had never stopped bleeding, but her mind slowly lifted the veil that had been laid upon it, and would often talk into the long hours of the night with Dora, sipping their tea together. Only one thing was off limits - Lestat.

And then she'd met Mona Mayfair, who had turned them both, in the vampiric witch's fascination with the women of Lestat who had come before. They had both gone willing, to Mona's surprise. 

Dora had followed the coven's writing career since her incident, although the later novels had lessened in both quality and spiritual weight.

This latest book… Dora groaned and laid down on her bed, wishing for all the world she could forget what she just read. She looked up at her laced fingernails, bright light pink, like her mother's. 

The wider vampire community had left the covenant a long time ago. Still, she found the occasional piece of rotted clothing from the 17th century in a nun's cell, or a pressed flower from Australia, or a book written in a language she didn't recognize. It was hers, again, and she'd favored a natural, simple look over the decadence of her father's religious icons.

Ghost aliens, she thought, Lestat believes in ghost aliens. God is, supposedly, a ghost alien who steals our pathos for its own gain.

Dora didn't believe Lestat, of course. Her truth was internal, not external, and no longer did miracles or visits sway her core beliefs. But Lestat… well, it must be hard to maintain critical thinking skills after 200 plus years. Dora suspected he had been contacted by a high level spirit who had spun a convincing narrative. 

She exhaled a breath she didn't know she was holding. And to think she had once adored this man, engaged in intimacies she'd never repeated with a living soul… Her father had died, she told herself, her father had just died and Lestat had murdered him, with all of his characteristic guilt.

Dora would talk to Gretchen, she decided. She put a comb through her short hair, and dabbed a bit of Blue Waltz on her wrists - a gift from her mother, on her eleventh birthday. Gretchen would know what to do.

-

Gretchen was in the garden, with the night jasmine popping out of the flower bed, and the ivory-pale magnolias blooming and thick. Her blonde hair curled in the humidity, becoming heavy and coiled around her neck. Same haunted eyes, bleeding hands, filled and empty in her spirit.

"Hello, Dora." Gretchen said, without looking at her. "Your thoughts are loud tonight."

Dora sighed. "I… didn't mean to call out, but…"

"I know." Gretchen turned towards her, but not quite meeting her eyes. "I cannot tell you if Lestat has gone mad, or not. I don't know what to tell you of my own experience."

A sinking feeling. "You… had a base of what you experienced. You knew, you weren't… pulled to the nearest, most powerful creature that called to you. You knew what you were doing."

"I don't know about that, but it's a lovely, generous thought, Dora. Lestat is… lost. Maybe he will always be lost. He always has been lost." 

Dora frowned. "Always?"

"I suppose we all are. As humans, as vampires. Truth is relative, and meaningless for those who hold a different truth. Maybe Lestat's inner imagining of the divine looks like the long-passed souls of aliens, now." Gretchen made a tossing, guessing motion with her hand - with ruby red wounds beading under the lamps. 

Something in Dora stirred. It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last time. She smelled Gretchen's blood - the scent of power, and the blood of animals, and the occasional priest. It was an earthy, cold scent, that suggested soil in March and the sharp antlers of a stag.

"Did you read the book?"

"No, but I heard you read it. Some parts louder than others."

Dora laughed. "I'm sure." Still her eyes caught the blood. "Gretchen… Your hands bleed, still. You never stopped."

"Yes." Gretchen stepped closed, suddenly, and Dora could see every detail of her bare collarbone, the golden hair wound into spirals, the simplicity of her white shift. "I find it beautiful, to tell you the truth. That some things have transcended the afterlife."

Dora knew this to be true. "Yes."

"I know what you want, Dora. I know you have a taste for these things. You're a very loud thinker."

Dora blushed, as much as a vampire could blush. "I… Gretchen, did you read…?"

Gretchen held out her hand to Dora's check, slick with divine fluid. "How could I resist?" She said in a low voice. "Drink, in remembrance of me."

Dora trembled, feeling the pulsing gash on her skin, and she breathed in Gretchen, her force, her magnetic power. "Yes." She opened her lips, and the blood trickled into her mouth, metallic and silver and the first brush of spring air, and she saw the candles lined behind Gretchen, and the chanting, deep in the rainforest, of thousands of souls, coming to see her, and Dora felt this power fill her. She sucked at the open, innocent blood, a blood that gave without damage, a blood of divinity. "Yes, yes."

Gretchen murmured, and pressed her fingers into Dora's mouth. "My little priestess..." Dora swooned, the cool blood filling her open mouth, its earthy flavour overwhelming her tongue. "Your thoughts are so quiet now…"

Dora drank and drank, seeing further, seeing the first moment with Lestat, seeing Gretchen in a far-away convent, a distant, familiar light, that Dora had seen herself once...

Dora pulled away. This was not her experience

Gretchen looked pleased, with a satiated look on her face. As if giving her blood was as satisfying as taking someone else's. 

A spark of something was in Gretchen, that Dora had seen once in Lestat. She shuddered. She studied the vampire nun - quietly - wondering what it was that had drawn them to Lestat, drawn them to each other. Perhaps Lestat had sought a certain kind of spiritual, or sensitive woman, and they all had paid a certain price for this intimacy. All wondering why they had been chosen, why they had been left behind, what made some people linger for Lestat, and what had made them pass into a single book. Mona came to mind, but Mona had already been deep in other swamps before Lestat. Mona had already had her power before Lestat had turned her.

"You look flushed." Gretchen looked at her expectantly. As if Dora needed to tell her what she'd seen.

"I just drank." She met her drugged-looking eyes. "Do you want to know what I saw?"

Gretchen considered this, with an almost ecstatic expression. She blinked. "No, I shouldn't. It is… our own experiences. I won't tell you what I saw either."

The sky was getting lighter - not yet dawn, but it was coming.

"Come with me to bed, tonight." Dora said, surprising herself. "Share my coffin. Feed."

Gretchen smiled, with flashing teeth, and looked downright predatory. And Dora… was wet now too, with the blood of Gretchen coursing through her. She would be devoured again, this time asking for it herself.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally cannot find a physical description of Gretchen on the internet and I have met my Tale of the Body Thief quota for this decade, I did a relatively close reading a few years ago and all I could remember was the goddamn boat and how much I did not care about the boat (and all of the terrible stuff) so forgive me if Gretchen is not actually blonde


End file.
